


legacy

by vltnxing (pyxz)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: kind of........., underworld!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 19:39:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13643097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyxz/pseuds/vltnxing
Summary: before them, the world was nothing. before them, the world was ash.





	legacy

**Author's Note:**

> underworld!au......kind of..... mostly based off of this visual https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1JvxxpVQAAIN30.jpg this is so corny but who cares

Before them, the world was nothing. Before them, the world was ash.

Before witches began boiling mortal blood, there was only war.

The humans had been given the world as a gift for their love, but soon they became discontent with what they had. Paradise is only paradise when it is not yet in the palm of your hands, after all, and the humans had the world at their feet. Soon, the gods grew tired of these little men. They wanted such unachievable peace.

“I'll leave them with you,” Yifan said with a grin.

Luhan looked down at the world he held between his hands, horrified and entranced. The bright red of their fires and the dark, rushing red of their blood created in his eyes an entirely new crimson. The moon glowed red that night, and the world stopped to gaze for a moment. The seas ran red, too; the mountains black; the trees scorched. There was nothing but chaos, and chaos, and chaos.

“Look at that. You’re already seeing stars.”

Luhan knew that the gods had given up on this world – they had moved on to another one – but if he did not have hope, then what did he have?

__

Luhan, a new god taken from the heart of a moon and the anger of a sun, sought to create a new world. He wanted a world born of love, not indifference; of joy, not sadness. He wanted peace, just as the gods once did, too.

It was just that he had never before seen flowers grow, and he thought it would be marvelous to watch a rose in bloom.

So, he planted a heart in the soil, and waited for it to blossom. After nights of rain and days of sun, the heart grew into a beautiful tree, and out of it stepped a woman. She had hair as black as night, and lips as red as blood. Her eyes sparkled the way the moon reflected off the ocean at night, and her skin was more beautiful than glass.

Luhan felt proud of his creation, then – when the woman transformed into a snake, into a man, into a bird – bewildered by the power he had created. He called upon her, and told him of his plan. She was intelligent, and she seemed sincere. He thought that she, too, wanted to help the humans. So, he allowed her to do as she pleased.

Sehun – Luhan’s creation – moved forward with his god’s blessing. In his honor and for his convenience, Luhan drew a mountain range over the horizon. It was lush with green forests and babbling brooks and wildlife. On top of the highest mountain stood a quiet little home of wood and stone, where Sehun would soon shape the world.

“All you see belongs to your hands,” Luhan told him.

“Is that not what the gods said to the humans when they first created the world?”

Luhan paused, and to what he said, Sehun only nodded: “It will be different this time.”

Sehun knew it would be different. He would make it so. He knew that Luhan didn’t know – that when he took that heart from those old, brittle ribs years ago, he stole along with it the memories of the human that it belonged to.

Sehun had lived before. He had seen this world before. He saw how his family suffered. He saw how his family died. Luhan was right – it was going to be different this time. Sehun wouldn’t let his family suffer this time.

—

A vengeful god has no chance to be a good one – that was what Yifan told him when he first saw the world. Yet, they had abandoned a world they had created because its inhabitants had turned hateful, and would no longer worship them. If that wasn’t vengefulness, then Luhan didn’t know what was.

           Still, he told Sehun the exact same thing.

“A vengeful god has no chance to be a good one,” he said. Sehun snickered.

“I’m a god? I thought I was just the servant of one?”

“You are... a catalyst of change,” Luhan answered hopefully.

Sehun nodded as the water in the kitchen came to a boil. “That I am.”

“Is that water you’re boiling? It’s awfully loud.”

“Come and see.”

Luhan stepped into Sehun’s home for the first time since he created it. He saw in the kitchen a large clay pot burning over a fire. In it, a black liquid boiling, smoke wisping into the air and disappearing before it could cover anything. Luhan was bewildered once more. “What’s this?” he asked.

“Medicine,” Sehun answered. “An all-curing antidote. I believe it can cure any illness.”

Luhan was bewildered once more – amazed, even. He praised Sehun and rewarded her with a pet wolf for protection, not knowing that the illness she spoke of was mortality.

One cannot suffer if one cannot die – Sehun carried this belief in her heart as if it was her heart.

—

Jongin shivered violently – so violently that his vision blurred. He could no longer separate the ceiling from the walls, the walls from the floor, reality from dreams. Arms numb, feet cold, and chest burning, he shivered – teeth rattling against the spoon Sehun had put in his mouth. His canine teeth hadn’t even come out yet. They had just fallen days ago. He could still remember tying them up in a little burlap purse and putting them under his pillow before he slept. Sehun, his mother, had told him that a magical little lady with wings that glitter like stars and eyes as bright as the sun would come at night and take his teeth in exchange for coins.

“Why would she do that, mama?” he had asked.

Sehun had smiled at him serenely, patted his hair, and said, “When a blessing comes, you don’t ask where it comes from, darling. You say…?”

“Thank you.”

Jongin watched – blearily, wearily – as Sehun entered his room with a bowl of soup between her hands. She set it down on the bedside table, and, with worry in the creases on her face, pressed her hand against his forehead.

“You’re still sick,” she said observantly, sadly. She leaned down, then pressed a kiss to his forehead. “I hope you get well soon, darling. If I ask Luhan for another child, he might get suspicious.” She looked somberly out the window, at the dark grey that covered the afternoon. “The sky is running out of clouds.”

The things she was saying made no sense to Jongin no matter how hard he tried to listen. I must be dreaming, he thought to himself, closing his eyes, willing the taste of the milk he drank yesterday to go away.

—

With a loud thud, then another, then another, an eagle tumbled down to the ground. Jongin hopped off of his horse with a triumphant grin, and grabbed a rope to tie his prize with. He rode home happily, dragging a cart of dead wild animals with him, the dead bird hanging off the side of his saddle.

When he walked into the house, he saw his mother sitting on the couch with a boy. This boy looked about his age, then he noticed that this boy was wearing his clothes. “Mama…?” he walked towards them slowly, holding the eagle over his shoulder, “Who is this?”

“I don’t know,” his mother answered, sounding delighted, eyes glued to the soft-faced marvel sitting in her home. “I just found him wandering in front of the house. He says he knows nothing… only his name.” Then, she turned her eyes towards Jongin. “I think he’s a gift from Luhan.”

Jongin grinned and raised an eyebrow. “For all the good work you do?”

Sehun nodded, only half-paying attention. In a heartbeat, she was on her feet and making soup in the kitchen. “You must be starved,” she frowned as she fussed over carrots and potatoes. Jongin sensed that she wasn’t talking to her son who had just gotten back from a long day of hunting. “Jongin, chop up some wood and make him a bed tomorrow, will you?”

It was completely unnecessary for him to reply. All of Sehun’s sweet questions and darling requests always seemed like commands – he thought this was because she was his mother.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Yixing.”

—

Mortality was a sickness, and Sehun had invented the cure. The only way to cure something is to reverse it, so that was exactly what he did. He created a virus to fight a virus, then inflicted it on his children. Jongin and Yixing – the first to contract the sickness of eternal life and superhuman abilities; the first Immortals.

(Luhan, ever fateful to humanity, allowed the world to run its course.)

However, Sehun had sewed immortality into Jongin and Yixing’s blood so tightly and so carefully that they thought they were invincible. They couldn’t die, and as their mother always told them – one cannot suffer if one cannot die.

In another bout to taunt mortality – which seemed to be the only thing they ever bothered themselves with – they went out to hunt in the pitch black darkness of a moonless night. They rode along the forest’s darkest and most treacherous path in search of a pack of wolves to slaughter, or a family of bears to kill. Hunting bows slung over their shoulders, swords hanging off their belts and not much else, they were beset by a bloodthirsty beast. It sprung onto them out of the dark, teeth latching onto anything, sending the panicked horses running and the stunned brothers onto their feet. The rabid wolf, bigger than any animal they had ever seen, had managed to paw Yixing off his horse shortly before dying by the hand of Jongin’s sword.

“Are you alright?” Yixing groaned as he struggled to stand.

“Fine…” Jongin lied, groaning through gritted teeth as the wolf bite on his wrist let itself be known.

“When did it bite you?!” Yixing asked in alarm, immediately ripping off his shirtsleeve and using it as a tourniquet for Jongin’s wrist. Instead of an answer, Jongin coughed.

Yixing carried him home, supporting his body – which seemed to be getting heavier and heavier – all the way back. As the night went on, Jongin became more and more ill; shivering uncontrollably in his bed, temperature as unstable as the day Sehun infected him with immortality. Sehun, affronted, and afraid of her child’s death, brewed her strongest potion, but it did nothing. By the end of the night, Jongin had become a monster of nature – the world’s first werewolf.

—

Determined to know what caused his brother’s monstrous mutation so that he may reverse it, Yixing became engrossed with books and research and travel – constantly leaving home to fetch information from this way and that. It was not long after he began his journey that he found himself having contracted the same illness as his brother – a mutation from a rabid animal; this time a bat. In absolutely no time as well, Yixing became the world’s first vampire.

—

Once again the world is at war. Once again the world is nothing. Once again the world is ash.


End file.
